25 Responses to “Show #239: The Braves Get Back to Lots of Winning”

I do think it’s a strong possibility. The Braves ate 10 of Lowe’s 15 on his final year. So it’s not unprecedented. And there’s some dumb AL team out there that would take him for 3 per year the next two years.

9 guys with double digit homers, but NO ONE with 30. that surprises me. i thought we would have at least 1, maybe a couple. in fact, we only have 2 players with as many as 20 homers. they have really spread around the long ball.

Dan Uggla is still making WAY fewer outs than BJ. Dan’s OBP is currently .311, BJs at .281.

The only reason Im saying that is to point out, Dan has performed much better than BJ this season. MUCH better. BJ may have the switching leagues excuse, but Dan had an “injury” as well, so Im not ready to pull the plug. (not that im happy about either performance)

Uggla has been bad this season, don’t get me wrong, but Elliot Johnson has a 63 OPS+ in the majors and Paul Janish has a 54 OPS+. This season, Uggla’s worst, he has an OPS+ of 86. So it’s kind of risky to bet on Johnson and/or Janish over Uggla, even as bad as Uggla has been.

B.J. has been worse, with an OPS+ of 61. However B.J. is younger, still in what theoretically should be his prime years or close to them, while Uggla is past that period of his career. Plus B.J. has always had better tools and is clearly more athletic so you figure there is more upside with B.J., even if there performances have both been poor.

@15 – I’ve not given up on BJ and I actually think he’ll be decent the rest of the way this year. But Dan has fallen off a cliff the past month. No power and fewer walks. I get that Dan’s numbers are better than Johnson and Janish over the season, but right now I take either one of them over Dan.

Steve @15, it shows you where the Braves are at secondbase that we are discussing Uggla, Elliot Johnson and Janish. I’m just glad Wren knows how to build a deep team.

Kind of off topic…I think I’ve said the before: It’s almost sacrilege but I think Wren and his staff are better than Schuerholz and his. I don’t want to make it seem like I think Schuerholz was bad but when the Ted Turner stamp on the team started to fade, when Schuerholz was still here, that’s when the drop-off happened. Or maybe Schuerholz lost something as he stuck around longer.

@15 – 17. I think if your are purely looking at Uggs from an offensive standpoint, then you could say he is better than Johnson/Janish. My question is (and someone with a handle on defensive stats, please help me out here): does his offensive “superiority” outweigh his defensive “inferiority”. Who is the better all-around asset to the team?

Ham @18, In Johnson’s best seasons he was worth somewhere just under 1 WAR, in limited playing time. So let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and say his true talent, if he was an everyday secondbaseman, is somewhere around 1-1.5 WAR.

This season Uggla has been worth 0.9 WAR per Fangraphs but -0.6 WAR per Baseball Reference. Baseball Reference’s method suggests he’s horrible on defense while Fangraphs suggests he’s bad but not horrible.

Depending on what site you look at, Uggla was worth 2-3.4 WAR in both 2011 and 2012. So it’s hard to say where his true talent lies. He could be below replacement-level or he could be a win or two above it (but probably no more than that).

I think the question of who is better overall depends on whether you think Uggla has completely fallen off the cliff and is pretty much done or whether you think he’s just your typical well-below-average regular that can keep you afloat but isn’t going to add all that much value. And the eye issues and the corrective surgery complicates things even further.

I’d probably prefer, since there doesn’t seem to be a clear difference, that they take the chance on the player that has displayed some ability to at least be a 2-WAR player as recently as 2011-2012. But I don’t feel great about it.

Since August 1, around the time the streak started (the 14 game one), I do contend that Dan fell off the cliff offensively. He’s not even had one XBH in that time frame. Which is why I think Johnson is the better option at this critical point in the season. What we need is WAR calculations over short periods of time (like the gamelogs summary in B-Ref) so we can see how much better some guys have been over others for certain periods.

Steve @22, Actually in Fangraphs’ splits they have WAR. So you can look at a player’s WAR in all sorts of situations, like last 30 days. Uggla’s is the worst on the team but it’s hard to draw conclusions about his true talent and what he is likely to do from today forward based on 30 days. That’s the problem I have with trying to look for trends in recent small samples.

It’s unbelievable but Uggla has a higher OBP than Schafer, Chris Johnson, Brian McCann and B.J. over the last 30 days. Not that he’s been as good as those guys because he did slug .105. But that shows me that those numbers don’t tell me much about players’ true talents and who I want playing over someone else.

Also guys like Schafer, Teheran and Wood are all at -0.1 WAR over the past 30 days.

Based on more information, I would hold my nose and take my chances on Uggla, assuming he’s healthy and having no further eye issues.